


Breathing

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex gets really sick, Canon Disabled Character, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, Hospital, M/M, Pneumonia, Post-Season/Series 01, Sick Character, Sickfic, Some angst, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 22:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: Kyle calls Liz to tell her Alex is in the hospital with pneumonia. She discovers that she's missed quite a lot of her friend's life lately.





	Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3 prompt is **Delirium**.
> 
> This is a day late, and I haven't even started on today's prompt. This one was never supposed to be over 3k! It got kinda out of hand.
> 
> I didn't even have time to really reread it, but I wanted to post it before going to bed.

“Kyle?” Liz picks up the phone. “What's up?”

“I'm gonna have to cancel the lab tests today,” Kyle says. Liz frowns at his tone. He sounds worried.

“Okay, but what's wrong?”

Kyle sighs. “I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but...no, you know what? I should absolutely tell you. He might be stubborn as hell but he needs friends right now.”

“Kyle, who are you talking about?” Liz frowns.

“Alex. He's sick. I just rode in an ambulance with him to the hospital.”

“What?” Liz almost shouts. “What's wrong with him?”

“He said it was just a bad cold, just before he stopped breathing,” Kyle rants. “My opinion? Pneumonia.”

Liz puts a hand over her mouth in shock. “Is he going to be okay?” she asks.

“He's alive and breathing again,” Kyle sighs. “So, probably. Once we find the right antibiotics. But I'm on call, so I might have to leave anytime, and I don't want him to be alone. Could you−”

“Of course I'll come over,” Liz says immediately. “I was just going to work in the lab until you came anyway. I can sit with him instead.”

“Thank you,” Kyle says, sounding relieved.

Liz meets him fifteen minutes later in the hospital lobby. “He's been settled into a room,” he says. “Scans confirmed pneumonia. We're starting him on broad spectrum antibiotics, see how that works.”

He leads her to the elevator and pushes the button for the third floor.

The room Alex is in is at the end of the corridor, one of the quietest. Kyle greets every nurse by name as they walk up to the door, but he quietens when they reach it. “He's probably asleep,” he tells Liz. “He has a high fever, so he's not really coherent even when he's awake.”

Liz nods, and they walk inside without knocking. She takes a sharp intake of breath at seeing Alex lying motionless in the bed, a large oxygen mask over his face. His brow is glistening with sweet, and yet he's also shivering even in sleep, gripping the blankets tightly. “Alex,” she murmurs.

As expected, Alex doesn't react. The heart rate monitor beeps too fast to believe that he's truly resting, but he's also not _there_. He has a frown on his face as he struggles to breathe even in the mask.

“How did it get this bad?” Liz asks Kyle, sitting down in the armchair by the bed.

“This thickheaded fool didn't call me until he was hacking up a lung and couldn't breathe,” Kyle answers. “By the time I got there, he was blue.”

“Thickheaded fool sounds like Alex, but this seems a little extreme even for him?”

“I don't know. Pneumonia can get back pretty fast, it's possible he just thought it was a head cold until last night. And he's been working himself to the ground for weeks.”

“How did I not notice?” Liz asks, mostly for herself.

“You haven't been there much,” Kyle shrugs. “It's understandable, between Max and Rosa−”

“I've had a lot on my plate. But Alex is my friend.”

“I tried to get him to rest, but he's obsessed with the data from Caulfield,” Kyle says. “Since he was discharged, he spends most of his time in his father's bunker.”

“My God, we were supposed to celebrate his discharge,” Liz realizes. “Where did time go? Why didn't he say anything?”

“Are we talking about Alex here?” Kyle raises an eyebrow.

Liz deflates. “Right. Alex never asks for anything. And he's avoiding Maria these days. She told me it was something about Michael?”

Kyle blinks at her. “Oh my God, you are out of touch with your 'friends',” he groans.

“What? Why?”

“He never said anything?”

“About what?”

Kyle hesitates. “Liz, I−if you don't know, it's not my place to tell you.”

“Kyle, why is Alex avoiding Maria?” Liz presses. Now that he's told her there's something she doesn't know, she can't just let it go. How did she ignore it for so long, anyway? She's known for weeks there was something wrong between Alex and Maria, her two best friends−are they, still, after she didn't talk to either of them for ten years? How did she not get to the bottom of this?

“Ask him, when he's better,” Kyle says firmly. “Or ask Maria, I don't know. I refuse to get involved.”

“Fine,” Liz sulks. She looks back at Alex, and feels a wave of compassion for her friend. While he was there making sure all of them were doing okay, while he took it upon himself to tell Liz about Mimi, was anyone here for him? “How have things changed so much that you're the one good friend he has?” she asks Kyle.

“I apologized,” Kyle shrugs. “I never expected him to accept it.”

Liz sighs. “I hope he accepts my apology too,” she says.

Alex doesn't truly rouse during the day. He shifts occasionally, rejecting the blankets when he gets too hot, or curling up when he's cold. His bed is set up do that he's nearly sitting up, and Liz understands why when he's taken by a bout of coughing that leaves him moaning and gasping for air, even as Kyle ups the oxygen content of his mask. Kyle has to leave soon after, his pager going off, and Liz finds herself alone with a feverish Alex.

She sits back and settles in to wait. She didn't bring a book, but she has too much on her mind to read anyway. She texts Max, who is stuck at home since he was resurrected, his energy level too low to go out, let alone go back to work.

_Do you know what's going on between Alex and Michael?_ she asks after updating him on the situation. She doesn't ask about Maria. That started after Max died, Liz thinks, that's why she barely noticed.

_Only a little,_ Max answers.  _Michael doesn't want to talk about it._

Liz frowns.  _They have a history?_ she texts back. Obviously they have something, but Michael is dating Maria.  Was dating Maria, because Maria apparently broke if off last night.

Oh God, Maria. Liz was supposed to meet her at the Wild Pony, spend the night together. Maria can't close the bar, but she wanted to wait until the end of her shift and get drunk. And Liz should have been there half an hour ago.

_Something like that,_ is Max completely unhelpful answer. Liz looks up at Alex, as he's taken by another coughing fit. She can't leave, she decides, doing her best to support him as he hacks and rubbing circles into his back. Alex looks at her with feverish eyes, the most awake he's been in hours.

“You can rest,” Liz murmurs. “I'm here.”

Alex nods weakly. The complete trust on his face, amid the pain and confusion, probably just comes from the haze of sickness, but Liz still feels like she doesn't deserve it. He closes his eyes, exhausted.

Her phone starts ringing, and he briefly opens his eyes again in panic, but Liz soothes him with her hand on his arm.

“Maria?” she asks, picking up. “I'm so sorry, something came up and I forgot−” Liz interrupts herself. Should she tell Maria about Alex? They're not on good terms, apparently, and Alex would tell her not to, she's sure. But Alex isn't in any state to protest, and Kyle is right, he really needs friends. “I'm with Alex. He's sick.”

“Sick as in the flu or−” Maria asks. Liz can hear the frown in her voice.

“Pneumonia. He's in the hospital.”

“Oh my God. Is he gonna be okay?”

“Probably,” Liz answers, repeating what the nurse told her an hour ago. “His fever hasn't broken yet, so he's in a pretty bad state right now. Visiting hours are almost over, but I don't want to leave him.”

“Yes, of course, if you can stay, keep him company,” Maria says. “I won't be able to close up until midnight at least, so I guess I should come in the morning? Do you need anything, though?”

“I don't think so,” Liz answers. “I'll probably have to go home for the night anyway, but I don't want to get drunk and have a hangover in the morning, if Alex needs me, or−”

“Of course, girl, I understand. My boy problems are nowhere near as important as Alex.”

Liz frowns at the strange melancholy in Maria's voice. She's still missing something, there. She'll ask her friend later, though, when they can talk over a beer. Now is not the time.

“Who else knows?” Maria asks.

“Kyle called me, and I told Max,” Liz answers. “And now you. I think that's it.”

“Someone should tell Michael and Isobel.”

“Would they even care?” Liz asks, trying to pretend to herself that she's just concerned, not fishing for information.

“I don't know about Isobel, but I saw them together a couple of times. Michael will want to know.”

Now that she thinks about it, Liz has seen Alex and Isobel together at the Crashdown several times, though she barely works there now. Another thing she missed completely. As for Michael…

“I'll tell him,” Liz says. “And I'll text Isobel. But I'll wait until morning. It's too late to come and see him, so there's no point in worrying them, right?”

“Whatever you think best,” Maria says. “I have to go, sorry. Give Alex a hug for me, okay?”

“I will,” Liz nods, rubbing Alex's arm with her free hand again.

Kyle comes back just before the end of visiting hours, ten minutes later, to tell her that he's going to sleep in the doctor's lounge and keep an eye on Alex through the night.

“Go home,” he says. “He's not going anywhere.”

Liz gives Alex the closest she can get to a hug, around the tube of his oxygen mask and the IV, and drives back to Max's.

In the morning, she picks Maria up on the way to the hospital.

“So what's going on between you two, anyway?” she asks Maria in the car, trying her best to sound like she's not as desperate for a response as she is. It's been on her mind all night. It was that or thinking about how sick Alex is.

Maria sighs. “It turns out...you remember Alex's museum guy? We joked about it for weeks before Rosa−”

“I remember,” Liz says. She never knew if Alex saw him again. Everything fell apart when Rosa died, and she didn't see Alex again before she left.

“It was Michael Guerin.”

Liz opens her mouth in shock. “What?”

“Yeah,” Maria says, her voice sad. “Michael and I hooked up when we were in Texas, and Alex found out, so he told me.”

“And you still−” Liz starts. She doesn't know how to end that question without coming off as rudely accusative.

“Michael told me it was over and I...I wanted it to be. I like him. A lot. He was so sweet to me when I was feeling awful about my mom, and−”

Liz stops the car in the hospital parking lot and gives Maria a long look. “But it wasn't over. That's why Alex...avoided you.”

“I told him it didn't mean anything, after Texas. I promised him,” Maria says with anguish.

Liz closes her eyes briefly. From Alex's point of view, that must have felt like a betrayal. She can't really blame Maria for wanting comfort, and she hasn't been much of a friend to Alex either, but it must have been really hard for him.

“So they're...exes. And still love each other,” she summarizes. “Is it why you ended it with Michael?”

“Yeah. I thought I could settle for coming in second, that he'd get over Alex eventually, but then I realized that if Michael didn't get over Alex in the last ten years when Alex wasn't even there, I was kidding myself thinking that he even could. The three of us all deserve better.”

Liz nods.

“But I never wanted to lose Alex's friendship,” Maria adds with a small sob.

“We've been really crappy friends,” Liz says.

“You?”

“I missed all of this, didn't I? Am I the last one to know?”

Maria shrugs. “Isobel and Max both knows, if the looks they've been giving me is anything to go by. Kyle has been about as cold to me as Alex, so I'd say him too.”

“Right,” Liz rolls her eyes. “Let's go sit with him and we'll apologize when he's feeling better, alright? We completely missed his discharge, too, I meant to throw him a party.”

Kyle welcomes them to Alex's room. “Be quiet,” he says.

“How is he?”

“His fever still hasn't broken, so we've switched him to different antibiotics. He's not doing great.”

Alex looks even more flushed than last night, his breathing ragged. Maria immediately goes over to take his hand, but he doesn't react at all.

“He's been pretty much unresponsive all night, edging into delirious,” Kyle says. “If he's fever doesn't break by tonight, or goes any higher, it could get dangerous.”

“There isn't anything to do?” Liz asks. She already knows the answer, of course. She a biologist, not a doctor, but she knows enough about the human body.

Kyle just shakes his head. “I have to go to work,” he says, “but I'll be by as much as I can.”

“Thank you,” Liz says, reaching out to squeeze his arm.

“He's my friend, too.”

“I know.”

Alex stays mostly quiet until mid-morning. Liz still hasn't plucked up the courage to call Michael and Isobel, still trying to process everything she's just found out. Maria just bites her lip, looking at Alex with so much sadness that Liz feels for her.

In an access of fever,  Alex throws his blanket off him so far that it falls off the bed. Maria immediately steps back to pick it up, arranging it at the foot of the bed for when he needs it again, but Liz stares. 

“I hadn't seen it yet,” she says, nodding to Alex's stump. “He's so...I forget it happened, sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Maria says. “He wasn't wearing the prosthetic all the time when he came back here, but now he barely has a limp.”

Liz remembers, suddenly, that Alex came back to Roswell months before she did, and that she missed that, too. She hadn't quite realized that Alex and Maria saw each other before the reunion, even when Alex came to tell her about Mimi.

“He's really good at hiding things, isn't he?” she mutters.

“Or we've forgotten how to look,” Maria says.

“I don't know if we've ever known. It took me years to see how bad his father was, and I still didn't suspect−” Liz interrupts herself. Maria still doesn't know about the aliens, of course.

Alex shifts again on the bed, his face scrunched up in pain. He mutters something, but the oxygen mask muffles it up.

“What is it?” Liz asks. “Alex?”

Alex doesn't react. He throws his head to the side, like he's having a nightmare. He shivers, so Maria draws the blanket back over him, and he latches onto it.

He says something again, louder, so Liz pulls the mask just far enough from his face to hear. “Michael...”

“Michael isn't here,” she says.

“Michael...”

“I think he's delirious,” Maria says. 

“Please stay...” Alex articulates with difficulty. It's too much for his body, and he doubles over in a fit of coughing. Liz does her best to hold him up until it calms down.

“Alex...” she mutters sadly. “What are you seeing?”

Alex stays agitated a bit longer, but he doesn't speak again, too exhausted.

Liz and Maria exchange a look.

“I think it's time to call Michael,” Maria says.

Alex wakes up slowly, clawing his way back to consciousness. The world feels almost unreal, far away, the voices around him muffled before they make it to his brain. There's something on his face, so he brings up a hand and hits plastic.

“Don't touch that!” someone says, catching his hand. Alex doesn't fight. He doesn't have the energy, and he'd recognize this voice anywhere.

“What−” he tries to say, but the thing on his face−an oxygen mask, he understands−makes it hard to talk. Someone pulls it away from his face before he has to.

“What are you doing here?” he rasps.

He tries to clear his throat, but it only sends him into a painful coughing fit, until his lungs and his throat feel like the aftermath of a bomb strike. When Alex lies his head back down on the pillow, exhausted, Michael is looking at him with a pained face and hands him the cup of water that was on the nightstand. Alex tries to take it, but he's too weak to even raise his hand that far, so Michael gently brings the straw to his mouth.

“Kyle called Liz, who called Maria, who got Liz to call me,” Michael answers. “I don't know, man. I came as soon as I heard.”

“Why?”

“Because you're sick?” Michael phrases it as a question, as if Alex isn't making any sense asking why, as if it's obvious.

“You didn't have to come,” Alex sighs. “I'll be fine.”

“Your fever's finally broken, but Valenti says you won't be back to normal for at least a month, and that your lungs might be damaged.”

“Still,” Alex says. He's to tired to parse the information, but it's no worse than he could have suspected. It doesn't tell him why Michael is sitting at his bedside, instead of at work, or at the Wild Pony with Maria. But Maria is here, too, and Liz. Alex frowns. What are they all doing here?

He doesn't get the time to ask before he's folded in two in another coughing fit, though. Michael gently replaces the mask on his face, and breathing becomes a little easier. Liz is holding one of his hands, and Michael the other, and Alex doesn't know what he's done to deserve that. He's been terrible to everyone lately, his need to get away from seeing Michael and Maria together driving him to isolate himself. He's barely talked to anyone but Kyle and Isobel in weeks. He swore to Liz he'd celebrate his discharge with her, but when the day came, he didn't find the energy to call her.

He looks up again to see Michael still staring at him intently, and Kyle and Isobel walk into his room. Isobel just nods at him, the concerned look on her face easing a little when he nods back. Kyle immediately comes to get his vitals, ignoring everyone else in the crowded room.

“Michael and I broke up,” Maria announces out of the blue. No one looks surprised, so Alex assumes he's the only one who didn't know. He doesn't know whether to jump in joy or be sad for them, so he just wheezes. Not that he can physically do anything else.

“We'll talk when you feel better,” Liz says.

Alex makes eye contact with her, briefly, stricken by the guilt he finds there. He reaches for the mask again, but she stops him. “It's okay,” she says. “Just work on getting better.”

Alex gives up and nods. He turns back to Michael, who still hasn't let go of his hand. “What she said,” Michael says with a small smile. “Sleep. I'll be here.”

Alex closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it! I don't know if I'll try to do day 4 tomorrow or just skip over to day 5 and come back later. I didn't have any great idea for day 4 anyway, so I'll see when I've gotten some sleep.


End file.
